Here's a new item that I'm totally turning off. Basically, you grab it, and if you hold it for long enough, you get either: A: In time mode, you get an extra kill added to your score.B: In stock mode, you get a whole extra stock.

Some things from Sakurai:"Pic of the day. "Looks like there was an impostor in the earlier posts, so I introduced him to my sword!" ...I'll leave it up to your imagination if he really said that or not. The veteran hero, Meta Knight, returns to battle!! We didn't forget the Battleship Halberd either!!"

"Meta Knight's Up Special Move, Shuttle Loop, changed quite a bit in this game. The glide is gone, and the attack slashes opponents twice while spinning in a large loop. This has turned into a highly technical and effective move."

"Pic of the day. Nightmare Wizard appears as an Assist Trophy! He will engulf the stage in darkness, and fighters will need to brawl blindly for a while. Look out for the effect before it goes dark, and play it to your advantage. Blinding and reversal effects even make the computer players mess up."

Here's a new outfit for Zero Suit Samus. It's based on the ending cards for Zero Mission and Fusion. Now, where's Path of Radiance Ike and Dr. Mario?Also, the Brinstar stage from Melee (which returned in Brawl) is returning again for the 3DS version.

"Pic of the day. The treasure chests that appear in Smash Run are very important. Not only do they give you stat boosts, but they also give you custom parts (the bag on the right) and Smash Run powers (the bag on the left). You should pick these up and use them in the next battle!!""…However, watch out for Mimicuties disguised as treasure chests. Run away! RUN AWAY!!"

"Pic of the day. The 3DS version has an excellent Sounds collection! The design looks nice for a sound test screen, doesn't it? The font color for the "Remix" text on remixed songs comes in pink or white. The pink ones are songs arranged for this version of Super Smash Bros., while the white ones are remixes made in earlier Smash Bros. games. This means there are reoccuring songs from past releases.""Choose your songs and play with features on the bottom screen. You can listen to character voices, too. One of the new highlights for this feature is the "Play in Sleep Mode" option in the upper right. If you turn this on, you can listen to the tracks with your headphones even when your Nintendo 3DS is closed. The L and R Buttons will let you skip tracks. This means you can use it as a portable music player. Enjoy listening to the tracks you love by putting all songs in loop, shuffle, or selecting your favorite tracks!!""In Smash Run, the background music plays randomly from the songs you select from the track list. This means you can customize your own song lineup!! Usually each stage has two tracks-which makes for a lot of songs on its own-but as a bonus, we've added more songs for you to enjoy in Smash Run and in the Sounds area.""By the way, here's another music announcement!! You can now listen to some of the tracks on the official website. We're planning to add more tracks a little at a time, so stay tuned. www.smashbros.com"http://www.smashbros.com/us/music/

"Pic of the day. In Classic mode, you challenge multiple stages en route to a climactic final battle. The more gold you put onto the Fiend's Scale, the harder the battles will be. In return, your rewards will get better and more abundant. The best way to earn gold fast is to win Classic battles on higher intensity.""In Classic mode, you can choose your next challenge on the route map. Looks like Master Hand is waiting at the end, but perhaps something might change if you raise the intensity…?!"

You can watch other people fight online and place bets on who will win. You will get money in four-way matches if you place in either first or second, so I assume you get a payment if the fighter you bet on comes in first or second.

I don't know why, but there's a newcomer today.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUl1EkUJ46k

It's Shulk from the too rare and expensive to play Xenoblade Chronicles. Pick a copy up now for $100 only at GameStop!They're remaking the game for 3DS, which I'm happy about.They're remaking the game exclusively for a "new" version of the 3DS that is more powerful or whatever. Fuck you. It's fucking bullshit is what it is.

A few more things:Two new videos were released. The first is a Japanese TV commercial, and the second is more in-depth, but still Japanese.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtUQXr4swYEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omeOylQYkuU

This is important, though. The second video accidentally showed Ganondorf at 55 seconds in.

Spoiler:

If you tried to find him in the actual video, and couldn't see him, I don't blame you.

The second video also shows off LANDMASTER, Giga Bowser, and Kirby's custom moves.Between the two, they've confirmed four returning stages. Corneria from Melee, Mushroomy Kingdom, Yoshi's Island, and the Pikmin stage from Brawl.

The official site has also given images of new, old, and returning assist trophies.The new ones are Phosphora from Kid Icarus: Uprising, and Dr. Kawashima from Brain Age.

Spoiler:

Also, new images of Pokémon. I'm less sure which Pokémon have and have not been revealed, so check it:

Now All-Star Mode is unlocked from the beginning, and expands as you unlock more characters.You face each character in order of debut. Unlike Brawl, where you faced them by series, now you face them by debut year of the character themselves. So you'll face Mario for 1981, but Luigi will be in 1983, Peach and Bowser will be in 1985, and Rosalina will be all the way in 2007. Charizard and Pikachu will be in 1996, but Lucario will be in 2006, and Greninja will be in 2013. That sort of thing.

Every character now has eight recolours.Here we see Samus's Varia Suit, Fusion Suit, pink suit, Dark Suit, Gravity Suit, green suit, Light Suit, and Dark Samus colours.Also, four more villagers, all of whom are ugly as shit.

Today (yesterday technically), the ULTIMATE 3DS SMASH 4 GUIDE came out/was leaked. It has barely any new information. No new characters, but there will be a sequel to Brawl's Pictochat stage. This is good news for me, since I loved the original stage.

The big news is all(?) of the recolours for every announced character, from Mario to Shulk. There is a printing/screenshot error on Luigi's, showing his default colouration twice, so he's got one more that we haven't seen. All of his from Brawl are present, by the way.Highlights (that I can give an actual name to) include:>AMERICAN MARIO (Amerio)>Fire Flower Peach (sans ponytail)>Fierce Deity Link>AMERICAN SHEIK>A Toon Link Between Worlds>Eliwood/Roy Marth>Sigurd Ike>Chrom Ike>All of Lucina's colours are based on different characters from Fire Emblem: Awakening>Naked Meta Knight Kirby>Pikachu with Gold's hat

The only bad thing (aside from Pacman's and Sonic's lack of colours) is that half of Olimar's costumes are actually a different character entirely (Alph from Pikmin 3). Unprofessional fan game-ass bullshit.

Okay, the game comes out in Japan tomorrow, but retailers don't give a shit and have given out early copies.So now we know the full roster, unless they do DLC or Wii U/3DS connectivity.They streamed it all, so we know it's real.

AREYOUREADY

Spoiler:

I'll just list the unannounced characters:

Veterans:WarioMr. Game and WatchGanondorfFalcoJigglypuffNessDr. MarioR.O.B.

One thing I find odd is Mii Fighters's placement. It was said that they'd replace the random icon when active, but there they are.

So onto the new characters:Lucina, Dark Pit, and Dr. Mario are straight up clones. Not Lucas-tier "only considered a clone because people are idiots who never press the A button", just clones. Six unique characters were cut for this (plus Mewtwo not returning makes seven).Ironically, the Melee clone risen from the dead is more unique than the new clones. Dr. Mario has Dr. Tornado rather than F.L.U.D.D. And regular Mario was never used again.Duck Hunt Dog is like Pacman, in that he attacks with sprite-based shit from old Nintendo games.The Koopalings and Bowser Jr. ride around in their little flying clown car. You can be any of the eight. It works better here than with Alph, for reasons that I can't put into words. Maybe it's because I want to play as Larry.

So, here are my thoughts:You see the blank space? There are enough spots for four characters, and then Mii Fighters are supposed to take the random spot, so that makes five.This is probably just wishful thinking, but what if the last five characters are being held hostage until the Wii U version comes out, then they'll either be patched in, or made a free download separately?Casting aside Ivysaur and Squirtle (who were a bit hopeless when Charizard was confirmed to be flying solo), this gives us:LucasMewtwoWolfIce ClimbersSnake (or Roy?)

The thing that really makes me think this might happen is Ice Climbers. Smash Run has the polar bear from Ice Climber as a standard enemy, and it's kind of weird that they'd just remove a whole series altogether. Metal Gear, I can understand, but Ice Climbers were pretty fucking unique and 100% Nintendo.I don't know. Mewtwo and Snake (Roy?) coming back would gather a lot of attention for the Wii U version's release, two months after the 3DS version. Plus, it wouldn't technically violate the "same roster between versions" thing. Then Lucas, Wolf, and Ice Climbers are just icing on the cake for most people.

The demo came out today. There is only one stage (Battlefield), but you can choose both its original and Final Destination form. There are five charactersto choose from; if I had to rank these five characters right now:

5: Mega ManUgh. He has a great vertical recovery, and his smash attacks are great. That's about it. Having his neutral AND forward attacks be the regular-ass Mega Buster really limits his potential, especially against Link (more on that later). His dash attack is just kind of there. Compared to the other four, it's really shit.His aerials might be good, but the game seems to be more about the ground game. Good news for Little Mac, at least.His final smash is pretty good. If you can catch anyone in it, there's a very good chance you'll just K.O. them outright.

4: PikachuPikachu got nerfed a bit. His down smash doesn't suck people in from as far away, and his thunder kind of sucks. Everything else about him is fine, I guess. Not much different than Brawl, really.His final smash is a bit easier to control, but still sucks.

3: MarioI think Mario is better in this one, but he's still got one move that completely fucks up his moveset. F.L.U.D.D. is a useless piece of shit. It does NOTHING. No matter how long you charge it, it does NOTHING.His general power and especially his Super Jump Punch are a lot better now, so he's right in the middle here.His final smash is still absolute shit.

2: VillagerVillager is surprisingly good. Two GREAT recovery moves, and two powerful smash attacks (his down smash isn't too great), as well as an up-air that seems to actually lift him up. The pocket move could be super-useful if you can pocket Mega Man's charge shot or something, but it's kind of useless against Mario's fireballs or Mega Man's Mega Buster shots, since he can only pocket one thing at a time. If he's holding an item, he'll pocket that instead, so that's kind of lame.His down special, the tree, isn't anywhere near as useless as I'd thought. It doesn't take long at all to grow the tree or cut it down. The only real problem is getting someone in range of the tree's falling top section after you cut it down.His final smash isn't that great, but you could probably K.O. semi-reliably if you manage to use it properly.

1: LinkOH HOW THE TABLES HAVE TURNEDLink was shit in Brawl. Absolute shit. Now he's absolutely great. His dash attack is now a jumping slash that can K.O. pretty fucking reliably. His spin attack can be charged, and can K.O. pretty damn well itself. Neutral combo and smash attacks also work well for this.His bow is better, his boomerang is faster, his bombs come out faster, and, best of all, his hookshot no longer falls on the floor if he misses a grab. And his shield deflects normal projectiles (like Mega Man's Mega Buster or even his charge shot) when he's just standing around, or running forward. He's just so much better, it's absolutely crazy.His final smash is the same as Brawl, so it's pretty good.

So how does the game play on 3DS? Better than you'd think, actually. The lack of a C-stick is pretty lame, but I got used to it pretty quickly. The layout of the face buttons isn't ideal, but it works well enough. I often hit the B button instead of the X or Y button when trying to recover, though.An odd thing they did: Since the 3DS has two shoulder buttons instead of three, they made one grab and one shield. However, the grab is on the left, rather than the right. I got used to it quickly, but it was an odd choice. I think you can swap them in the final game, but don't quote me on that.

The game also saves your favourite outfit for each character (or the last one you used, at any rate). You use blue Link, then switch to Villager for a few rounds? When you reselect Link, he's still blue.

Here's the Wii U Star Fox stage. It looks more interesting than any of the others, at least. Sucks that the 3DS version is stuck with the Melee stage for the third time. Fourth, really, since SSB64's Star Fox stage was almost exactly the same. At least give us Brawl's Star Fox stage.